Izzy Christiansen: How I see football

After ending a career that brought league titles in two countries and 31 England caps, Izzy Christiansen’s love of football meant she was never likely to move on from the game when she hung up her boots.

Instead, since retiring as an Everton player in May last year aged 31 she has forged a reputation as an analyst/pundit who is equally at home covering the Premier League as the Women’s Super League.

Christiansen is also studying for her coaching badges, something she is doing alongside her role with UK broadcaster Sky Sports, where she is a regular on its WSL coverage. She will be part of the team at Selhurst Park covering Crystal Palace versus champions Chelsea in the WSL on Friday evening.

She tells The Athletic about how she prepares for her media work and, more broadly, how she sees football — and the way that influences her analysis.

I watched Sky’s coverage back when I was a player. I did an interview when Sky Sports first got the broadcast deal for the WSL and I said how we, as players, have to understand that we’re now going to be analysed in depth. I don’t want to use the word criticised, but if you’ve had a bad result, the likelihood is it’s not going to be positive feedback. But you get that in the meeting room every day at your club. You go through clips and not every one of them will be good. It’s (TV analysis) just that, but on a much larger scale, because this is on the television. I didn’t mind it and saw it as part and parcel of the game.

As a former player, you always think about the player during the analysis process. If a player is having a bad game, you don’t just want to pick them out and say it wasn’t good enough; you’ve got to understand why. Players definitely watch the WSL, and I’d hope we’ll never deliver analysis that’s going to make them not want to watch. As a player, you’d be interested in what people say about you.

The preparation process for a match lasts as long or as little as you want, depending on how much you want to do. I always try to make it very clear in my head how a team play. For the teams I don’t know as well, that’s where you have to dig deep a little bit and look back over footage. I always look for my own trends first, and then I’ll back it up by what other pundits have said on (the BBC’s Premier League highlights show) Match Of The Day. I go, ‘OK – they’re seeing that as well’. You validate your own views, but I genuinely think football is subject to how you interpret it. Being in the media, you have to be across press conferences and the key messaging. Sometimes, you can pick up on things the managers or coaches may say that validate the things you’re seeing as well. I look at stats quite a lot, although I don’t really see stats as a huge part of the game. I do like to see how successful certain teams are at what they do, and then I just make notes.

You watch a game with so many eyes: coach, player and pundit. You can experience and understand all three roles, but you’ve got to really hone in and focus on your strengths. You look for trends: if a winger is getting the better of a full-back every single time, it’s pretty obvious for everyone. But we’re analysing why. Why is the winger being really, really good against the full-back? How are they getting the ball to them? If you’re a coach, you don’t just think your full-back had a bad day at the office and it’s her fault; you think, ‘Why was my full-back exploited today? OK — we need to stop the supply to the winger. How do we do that?’ You can analyse 20 or 30 seconds back to understand why something happened. There’s always a reason.

We’re in constant dialogue with the gallery, who are directing the show. ‘Can we clip that?’, ‘Can you look at that?’, ‘Keep an eye on the No 10.’ From that, about five minutes before half-time, we get a compilation of clips that validate the trends in the game. There might be a goal to talk about, but if it’s 0-0, you’re definitely looking for what’s going on for a certain side. When we’re in the studio, we use the touchscreen technology to bring to life what we see. When we’re at matches, we use the TV screens to go through clips.

We get a few minutes to look at the clips and go, ‘OK – I’m going to speak about that’. I’ve found in the past that explaining football to my granny helps me simplify what I’m trying to say. With football terminology, you can end up in a spider’s web of words, but you’ve got to understand that the general public might not understand them. My work in radio really helped me articulate things. It’s about painting a picture and hopefully giving fans something that either makes them go, ‘I didn’t see that’, or, ‘I was thinking that as well’. It’s two-fold: to educate, but also bring that relatability. If I’m at home watching Sky and the pundit says something that I’m thinking, you feel great about yourself.

I don’t really like speaking too much about formations, but how players can get the better of people and how you can use relationships on the pitch to exploit weaknesses in your opposition. That’s because you see lots of trends now in football that change players’ positioning. Manchester City play their full-backs into the midfield in both their men’s and women’s teams, and that then pushes the midfielders higher, so they’re operating on the back line of the opposition. I look for relationships all over the pitch: ‘Those two have got a really good partnership in that area. The coach just needs to facilitate a system where those two players end up close together on the pitch so they can combine’. That’s how I would interpret football moving forward. Of course, you need to be solid and creative, but I think formations are moving towards a thing of the past. I think it’s all about average positioning, where a player is playing and relationships.

I’m in the relatively early days of my coaching course at the moment, but it really benefits what I’m doing in the media. Something I’ve always been interested in is differentiation. If you’ve got a group of people, how do you get the best out of every single player? Some teams have superstars: how do you challenge the superstar, and how do you get everybody else around them? There are so many fascinating tactics I’ve seen in world football. When Argentina won the (2022) World Cup, it was like: how does Messi stand still the whole game but he still delivers? What does that make everybody else on the pitch feel like? You look at the coaching around that and you’re like, wow – they’ve managed to bring it all together.

Certain managers have definitely whetted my appetite and interest in tactics, styles of football and how players can cancel each other out. As a player, you sit in the meeting room a lot, analysing tactics on a big screen, analysing game plans, previewing game plans. I’ve had a longstanding interest in how to do it, and tactics definitely got more prominent as I got further into my career. One of the key differences between the game five or 10 years ago compared to now is the physical aspect. In the past in the WSL, there were players who stood out physically. They’ve had to work on the technical side of their game as everyone else caught up to them physically. Now that every team is capable of withstanding the physical demands of the game and the league, it comes down to the intricate tactics, ways of playing, how coaches relay their messages, how well the players understand those messages and whether they implement them.

As you get older, you become more aware of the game. (Manchester City and Netherlands striker) Vivianne Miedema is on my coaching course and she’s extremely into it. There are a lot of senior players who have been part of a rise in football and therefore naturally become way more interested in the tactical side of the game. I know Jonas Eidevall leans on the older players at Arsenal — Kim Little, Lia Walti, Lotte Wubben-Moy, Leah Williamson — not necessarily tactically, but to ask for advice. I think that collaborative leadership, allowing the players to voice their opinions on how they do things, is really important. There’s a real learning piece in the power of using everybody within your squad, staff or players, to enhance what you do.

To be across men’s and women’s football is a privilege. When Sky approached me, I was at a point in my career where, because of how competitive I was, I wanted to keep winning things, but it wasn’t an option for me to go to a club that was a potential title challenger. I’d learned so much that I wanted to do something else. Staying in touch with men’s and women’s football is quite a heavy task, but it’s one I’m very inspired by. The amount of football I watch, for someone who just loves the game, is great. Everyone’s addicted to watching the WSL. You can feel that in football circles. The more eyes on it, the better.  

(Top photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)